Flat of the Blade
by Sacred Dust
Summary: After Angelica dies and Marco departs, a reluctant new handler and cyborg join a team whose very existence is threatened. With a former employee threatening to expose them, an angry billionaire funding their enemies, and a government slowly but surely turning against them, time will tell whether the new fratello restores the Agency's reputation—or finishes them off.
1. Senza Aiuto

_A/N: This story is set in between the events of the first and second anime releases, after Angelica and before Pinocchio. Jean and Jose's names are spelled Italian-style: Gian and Giuse, respectively. Pronunciation is the same._

* * *

 **I: Senza Aiuto**

* * *

"So," grunted Silvano, hiding his shock behind a thoughtful scowl and a drag on his _MS Rosse._ "You use children."

He breathed out slowly and watched the smoke rise to the ceiling. His new boss' office was uniform but comfortable, a study in earth tones and understated elegance; a world apart from the cramped sweatboxes and stacks of paperwork he was used to. Just when he thought he knew what to expect from civil service jobs, the Social Welfare Agency had come knocking. First his old army buddy Giorgio, then a stuffed shirt named Gian Croce who seemed more interested in his service with the _Carabinieri_ and Italian Special Forces than his most recent job as a military record keeper. He thought that rather strange until he learned of the Agency's true purpose—and its unorthodox brand of "social work."

"Correct," Lorenzo replied, hands folded on his desk. He was a candid, unsmiling fifty-something with short gray hair and glasses. "All of our operatives entered the program as females aged 10 to 16."

Silvano felt his skin prickle with unease. He had seen child soldiers during the Somalian Civil War, and gang members as young as twelve in the streets of Naples. On some nights, when sober, he saw their faces in his dreams. "Is that necessary?"

The director remained impassive. "It is expedient. The younger the subject, the more effective the treatments. They can move about relatively unnoticed, slip in and out of tight places. Their senses are more acute than those of any adult. Our cybernetic implants and mental conditioning lend them the physical strength and discipline they would otherwise lack. On the whole they are quite proficient and remain viable for several years, though we are conducting research to extend their lifespans. Each requires a handler, to train them and oversee their performance in combat."

Silvano nodded slowly. A bald, barrel-chested man in his late thirties with stern features and a dark growth of beard, he looked the part of a hardened government official. But he also had a contemplative and even gentle side; a moral compass that had always seen him through, no matter how many times he was tempted by the political corruption that threatened to devour his nation from within. Now that compass was pointing straight out of this office. He should decline the job offer and leave while he still had a choice, maybe even call a newspaper. What could they possibly offer him to make this an attractive prospect? The ethical implications of Section 2's program were staggering, assuming what Lorenzo described was even possible. Counter-terrorism was one thing, science fiction was another.

"These are gravely ill or suicidal children who are receiving a second chance at life," Lorenzo continued, sensing his hesitation. "We rehabilitate them, give them a comfortable place to live, and allow them to fight the very same crimes they were once victims of. Is that not a worthy cause, Mr. Silvano?"

He took another pull on his cigarette and thought hard. "With all due respect, Director, I'd have to see it to believe it."

* * *

"Her parents were farmers in South Africa," Gian Croce said, looking dispassionately through the window. "Their property was attacked by political extremists. Her father and brother were stabbed repeatedly, her mother beaten and assaulted in front of her. She was the only survivor."

Silvano stepped up to the glass and looked. A frail tiny form lay nearly motionless on the hospital bed. The doctor had strapped her down at some point, and he could see bruises on her arms where the nurses restrained her. A feeding tube protruded from her left arm. Lank blonde hair spread over the pillow and covered one side of her face. She was deathly pale and probably sedated, with only the slight rise and fall of her chest to indicate she was alive at all.

"She's veered between violent panic attacks and total unresponsiveness ever since. With no living relatives to claim her and the Director taking an interest in foreign subjects, we had her brought here as a refugee."

"How old?"

"She's twelve."

What must a thing like that do to a child? Silvano tried to imagine it and failed. His boyhood in Piedmont had been happy for the most part; his family never had much money and _papà_ drank too much after a hard day's work in the orchards, but that was all. Crime hardly touched him until his teen years, when some _mafiosi_ on the run forced a shootout with local police and his friend Lui was killed in the crossfire. Even if her traumatic memories were suppressed by the brainwashing—which, according to Gian, was not only standard but a blessing in disguise given what these girls had endured—there was no telling when they might resurface.

He watched her silently. For one of the few times in his life, he felt uncertain what to do next.

"Beto," Gian said, earning a glare from Silvano, who wasn't used to the agents' disconcerting habit of calling each other by their first names. "We could visit all the hospitals in Italy if you insisted. And at every one of them you would find a child like this. One who can't be helped by conventional doctors or therapists, though many have tried. Can you walk away from all of them?"

"A lesson in compassion, Gian?" he said incredulously. Tact had never been his strong suit, and he struggled to hide his distaste for the man. Almost unwillingly he turned back to the window, part of him hoping the girl would be gone and that this was all a nightmare he would wake up from any moment. She was still there; alone, suffering, helpless, and in that moment he knew the bastard was right.

He couldn't walk away.

* * *

For a gritty counter-terrorism organization, Section 2 was quite fond of euphemisms, and chief among these was "conditioning." Such a neat, tidy, emotionless word hardly described what Silvano witnessed here: repeated sessions of brain surgery via laser technology he never knew existed, interspersed with brief waking fits on the operating table as her body struggled to reject, then adapt to the alterations.

"Any questions yet, Mr. Silvano?" Dr. Bianchi asked while they waited out another round of convulsions. An agreeable-looking man with a soul patch, he went about his duties with a clinical detachment. This girl wasn't the first he had modified, nor would she be the last.

No questions came to mind other than "how the hell do you sleep at night," and asking that would not be conducive to a friendly working environment. Because he was working for the Agency now, whether he liked it or not. He couldn't take another day of that filing job, the bills had to be paid, and Lorenzo promised him reinstatement in the _Carabinieri_ if he completed three years of service.

Only three years? They must be hurting like hell for handlers—another euphemism that didn't sit well—and that didn't surprise him a bit. No man would accept a job like this unless he held a deep-bleeding grudge and could twist his conscience out of shape for long enough to fulfill the contract ... assuming one survived those three years without a Padanian's bullet renting space in his occipital lobe.

"These are only the preliminary stages," Bianchi continued as he studied his monitors. "She won't be usable for at least two weeks. With the recommended dose of conditioning it could have been one, but the minimum dose you opted for is a more delicate process. You don't have to be present for all of it."

"I'm not leaving," Silvano insisted. No matter what the doctor said, he _did_ have to be here. From the moment he accepted her, this girl became his responsibility. He needed to see what was happening to her, to know exactly what he was participating in. The Silvanos were a stubborn lot, and they didn't do things by halves. Every training exercise, every covert operation, every police raid and gunfight he'd distinguished himself in was carried out with one hundred percent effort. It had earned him a reputation that not even the higher levels of government could ignore. He wouldn't compromise that for anyone.

He must sever any emotional attachment to her in his mind; put his misgivings aside and ride it out until he was back on the force, with all the authority he needed to do the job his way. That Mafia scumbag from twenty-five years ago was still out there somewhere—with Luigi Conti's blood on his hands.

* * *

"Mr. Silvano."

He looked up with red-rimmed eyes. Ferro, a female staffer who displayed less emotion than the cyborgs themselves, was beckoning him to the two-way mirror. Through it they could see into a recovery room next door, where she'd been resting for several days.

Now she was sitting up.

He stood, extinguished his _Rosse_ and went straight for the door.

"Please compose yourself," Ferro said. "We don't wish to excite her. You must give her a name as well."

"I'll let her tell you," he grumbled, and swept out with his gun in hand. It was an old Beretta 8000 Cougar from his paratrooper days in the Special Forces. He strode into the girl's room, where she was sitting on the edge of the bed and examining her surroundings. She rose to her feet and fixed on him immediately. Her face was heart-shaped and pretty, though not enough to draw unwanted attention. The eyes were blue and pale as the surface of a frozen lake, the nose dotted with barely visible freckles. Her hair was trimmed to a golden cap so as not to hinder her sight or her movements, and a daily regimen and training schedule were prepared in advance. Both were utilitarian choices made without emotion on his part, much like the one he was about to make now.

"Your name is Kess," he said unceremoniously. "Repeat it."

"Kess," she echoed. One syllable, so he could get her attention immediately. In combat situations every second would count. He'd considered Tess as a nod to her Dutch ancestry, but decided that was unimportant and changed the first letter. Her real name had been Nelleke Janssen, but she was never to remember it. Her past was nothing now.

"You are a cyborg designed by the Social Welfare Agency to serve and protect the government of Italy. I am Beto Silvano, your supervisor." He refused to let the word "handler" cross his lips. She was a cybernetic assassin, not a circus animal.

"I am a cyborg designed by the Social Welfare Agency to serve and—"

He sighed irritably and held up his hand. "You don't have to repeat that."

"Understood." Her voice was quiet and cool and slightly hoarse; whether that was natural or an effect of the conditioning he couldn't say. If nothing else it had made her fluent in Italian, though the Afrikaner accent persisted.

"Your job will include spying, surveillance, and eliminating targets as directed. I expect you to carry it out to the best of your ability and obey my orders at all times. That is the extent of our relationship."

Kess said nothing, but her eyes lit up. Interesting. Perhaps his words had jibed with the doctors' brainwashing.

 _All right, Lorenzo ... time to see just what your little girls are made of,_ Silvano thought to himself. _And YOU, Beto, need to stop thinking of her as a little girl and get down to business._

"Your first mission is to dodge this."

The veteran brandished the butt of the pistol, stepped forward, and whipped it across her face.

She wasn't there.

It happened so quickly he didn't even see her move, and he nearly lost his balance into the bargain. Silvano righted himself and spotted her by the bed. One hand was braced on the wall and the other on the railing as her eyes scanned every breath he took, every tiny shift in his muscles. She was a fearless, disciplined machine who anticipated his next move even as she waited for further orders. No longer broken, and anything but helpless.

Good.


	2. Cugini

**II: Cugini**

* * *

"So what do you think of our new _fratello?"_ Amadeo said to Priscilla as the two staff members enjoyed their afternoon break in the summer haze. He had to lean close to her to make himself heard over the girl's target practice, not that he needed an excuse as the self-proclaimed 'Agent of Love.'

The brunette data collector squealed and clapped her hands. "Her name's Kess, right? She's so cuuuute! Sharp as a knife too. She just needs more training and some nicer clothes. T-shirts and dark slacks every day! So boring. As for Beto ... hmm. I don't think he's said more than two words to me. I hear he's a bit of a grouch."

Amadeo clucked his tongue. "No kidding. Yesterday I asked him if he'd ever met a woman as pretty as you in the _Carabinieri,_ just trying to make conversation, and he growled at me and walked away! How rude."

"He's one of Giorgio's old friends from the _Col Moschin,_ right? I guess they're a pretty serious bunch."

The former Marine chuckled heartily. "Yeah, old Giorgi got Lorenzo to offer him the three-year plan."

Priscilla tilted her head.

"You know, the same deal Claudio got? Three years and then back on the force. I bet he cracks up just like Claudio did, too. Acts all high and mighty, no sense of humor ... I can already see it coming."

"You think so?" Priscilla turned back and studied the _fratello_ again, squinting in the afternoon sunlight. The gruff, bearlike man was putting Kess through her paces on the outdoor shooting range—he eschewed the indoor one, saying it would make her soft—and her shots were missing, sometimes badly. He was making his displeasure known, barking orders and corrections, occasionally stepping in when his outdated gun jammed or he thought she was depending on the sight. But he never lost his temper, never walked away from her, never raised his hand to her as Gian had done with Rico several times. If he had no patience for socializing with anyone in the Agency, at least he had some for Kess. "What do you want to bet, Amadeo?"

He laughed again. "I'll bet you a tea party with Henrietta he won't last six months. That's the over/under. Agreed?"

"You're on, lover boy," she chirped. "And just to make it more interesting ... the loser has to buy her the tea set! Or losers, if you want to let the rest of the office into the pool."

"I'd be delighted, darling. Now, with that settled, how about a date?"

"No."

* * *

It took a few days for Kess to become reasonably accurate in outdoor shooting. Silvano chose to reward her with a change of pace in the indoor practice area, where the cyborgs were required to run through a concrete maze of corridors, shooting threatening targets (cutouts of gunmen, mobsters and such) while sparing non-threatening ones (unarmed women, children, hostages). It was a stiff test of a cyborg's speed, thoroughness, and ability to distinguish between friend and foe.

Kess failed her first attempt ignominiously. She took the straightest path, missed several rooms, and fired at everything that moved. She rushed out the exit to find an apoplectic Silvano, who seized her by the hand and led her back into the maze to show her everything she did wrong.

"Run it again," he snapped when they were finally back at the entrance. "And again, until I tell you to stop."

That was five hours ago. Now, with evening slipping away into night, she was still at it and Silvano was still supervising every move. It was nearly as tedious as pushing papers, but he hunkered down with a pack of _MS Rosses_ and a _caffè corretto_ and continued to watch.

"You sure are going all out," said a familiar voice from the observation room doorway. "But nothing less from old Beto, am I right?"

Silvano cracked a smile as he turned about. "Giorgi. I knew you couldn't hide from me forever."

"Who's hiding, _il commilitone?_ You've hardly been by the office since I got you in here. Though I see you've got your work cut out for you." Giorgio's rather plain appearance belied his considerable talents. Behind the long face, thin brows, and short dark hair lurked a clever mind and years of military experience. He first met Silvano in basic training and they had been good friends ever since.

"In more ways than one." Silvano shook his hand warmly, then turned back to the window and gestured to Kess who was beginning the course yet again. He'd given her minimal direction over the loudspeaker and let her figure out the rest by herself. Making her overly dependent on his orders would backfire the first time they got separated during a mission. "You know all these people are insane."

"For good reason. Sane people don't make it in crime-fighting anymore, Beto. They either drop out, or drop dead. After eight years on the force you must know that much."

"I know it doesn't have to be that way. And when they take me back as an inspector I intend to prove it."

Giorgio smiled and shook his head. "Still haven't gotten over Luigi, I see."

"You remember?"

"How could I not? It was one of the first things you told me about yourself in the barracks, and you've been looking for the killer ever since. You have to face it, old friend: no one can find Benito Salvatore anymore unless he wants to be found. He's too high up."

"We'll see," Silvano whispered. He looked on as Kess blazed through the course, systematically sweeping every room and blasting every hostile target while leaving noncombatants untouched. Something flickered inside of him then, a glimmer of the youthful fire he'd once possessed, and he found himself nodding along with every shot.

 _"Eccellente,"_ Giorgio remarked.

"She ought to be. She was so poor earlier I had her keep at it most of the day." He let her finish before speaking into the intercom. "That is enough, Kess. Join me in observation immediately."

She nodded, holstering her weapon and jogging up the stairs. Moments later the door opened and she walked in, smelling of gunpowder with sweat dripping down her forehead.

"This is Giorgio Alighieri, a senior agent for Section 2. Greet him."

"Hello, sir," she said breathlessly, inclining her head. "I am Kess."

Giorgio smiled. "Welcome to the team, Kess. I hope to see you join the others in group training soon. The other girls will enjoy meeting you."

Kess hesitated, seeming a tad unsure. "Understood."

"Well, I'll let you and your handler finish up here. Good night, Kess. Beto, catch me at breakfast tomorrow. Gian passed on some documents he wants you to look over, and the Director thinks your girl has earned a day off." With a wave, Giorgio left the observation room.

Silvano gestured to the table where a towel and a bottle of water stood waiting. "You may sit. Drink if you are thirsty." When she obeyed gratefully and drank the entire bottle without stopping, he cleared his throat. "You are improving."

"I live to serve the Agency, sir," she replied. It was just the sort of answer he wanted, professional and impersonal, and she probably knew that. But there was something else in her eyes, something that looked a lot like "thank you"—a distinctly human eagerness to please.

He looked away from it uncomfortably. "I'll get straight to the point. You came this far with an old piece-of-crap service pistol that I quit using years ago; I think you've fulfilled the training requirements well enough to use your own sidearm."

She watched with great interest as he reached into his inner suit pocket and produced a catalog. Inside were handguns of every stripe from arms manufacturers around the globe. He placed it on the table in front of her.

"Take a look at that when you have some time, and ... "

Silvano trailed off in disbelief as she began leafing through it right away, her eyes darting across the pages and absorbing every word. Even looking back several times to compare different models, she blew through the whole thing in minutes. Then she returned to a picture near the end and pointed it out: a Jericho 941 Semi-Compact with a polymer frame, developed by an Israeli manufacturer with assistance from an Italian firm.

"I have chosen," Kess said proudly. It was the first decision she had ever made.

* * *

"All that training with no down time? Spending seven nights in your recovery room?" the older girl exclaimed with a shake of her head. Her blonde pigtails whipped anxiously about her neck. "No wonder we haven't seen much of you! Welcome to Section 2. I'm Triela, and my handler is Victor Hilshire."

Kess looked down and shuffled her feet. Something felt familiar about this, and yet not; Dr. Bianchi said she lived twelve years of her life somewhere else and so she must have met other girls before but, having no recollection of this, she wasn't sure what to do. "Hello. I am Kess."

"Yes, you said that once already," another cyborg with long dark hair chimed in from the top bunk bed. She had just now looked up from the large book she was reading, and was studying the new girl through her glasses. "Don't you know anything else?"

"Be nice, Claes." Triela glared at her and patted Kess on the shoulder. "Don't mind her, she's always like that. I think she likes books more than people. These are Rico and Henrietta, both about your age."

Kess sized them up quickly as they greeted her. Rico was a serene-looking girl with an effortless smile and dull blue eyes under a dark blonde fringe; the brunette Henrietta was friendly too, but more reserved and self-conscious. Comparing the two of them side by side, Kess began to understand the different "levels" of conditioning she had heard about. At least, conditioning was what Dr. Bianchi called it. Beto called it brainwashing when he thought she couldn't hear.

"Rico's handler is Gian Croce, and Henrietta's is Giuse Croce; they're actually brothers, although they don't talk about it much," Triela explained. "Each handler and cyborg team is called a _fratello,_ because they become like family. Claes had a handler too, but he moved on, so she does other jobs for the Agency now."

Strange. How could somebody responsible for his charge's training and performance simply "move on?" She could not imagine living without Beto. And then there was that word ...

"We had another handler named Marco and a girl called Angelica, but he moved on too after she died," Rico added. She sounded quite unmoved, as though she were discussing the weather, but the other girls looked sad and glanced at Kess out of the corners of their eyes like they didn't want her to notice.

Dr. Bianchi mentioned that parts from a previous model were used in Kess' design. Could that previous model have been Angelica? Kess began to feel more uncomfortable than ever, standing in the middle of the dorm with the other girls all gone silent.

"Why do you call them 'handlers'?" she asked. She was a little curious, but mainly she just wanted to change the subject. Their peculiarities didn't really matter to her. All that mattered was fulfilling the Agency's expectations.

Triela motioned for her to sit down at a small table. "Well, that's what they do. They give us orders, provide us with weapons, and sort of hold our hands through the missions ... maybe literally, in Henrietta's case."

"That's not true!" the brunette protested, blushing.

Kess found herself relaxing as she sat down and the girls' banter continued. They seemed to get along well, and they must be very good at their jobs to have worked together for this long. Eventually Henrietta brought the conversation back to Beto, again mentioning him as the new "handler" and asking if she liked him. She found it was not an easy question to answer.

"He is my supervisor," she said slowly. "And he spends most of his time teaching me to be effective in the field."

"Naturally. That's what he's paid to do," Claes said flatly.

"Even Hilshire does that much for me," added Triela with a smirk. "But how do you feel about him as a person?"

Kess did not understand. Lacking a large number of other people to compare with Beto, she had not formed a clear picture of his personality. Nor did she know why it was considered important. Casting about nervously for an answer, she saw Rico looking at her with another smile—but this one seemed more genuine. Perhaps she understood the feeling.

"He allowed me to choose my weapon," she said finally. "A Jericho pistol. I like that about him."

Triela, Henrietta, and Claes seemed nonplussed, but Rico was nodding eagerly. "I see. Gian lets me choose my weapons also. The CZ-75 is my favorite, and the Jericho was modeled on it."

"Is that so? Then perhaps, in a way, the two of you are cousins!" joked Triela.

Kess returned Rico's smile, and a wonderful warm feeling stole over her. She could not identify it; it was something new, something she wanted to keep.

"I would like that," she said.


	3. La Sforza

_A/N: I'd like to thank PSVT and thescarredman for their feedback; it was very encouraging. Gunslinger Girl is a work of enduring power, the kind that should be remembered, and if my story can bring some attention back to our section on FF I would be thrilled to see that happen._

* * *

 **III: La Sforza**

* * *

Giuseppe Croce looked extraordinarily busy as he sat alone in the dining room, one hand occupied with a plate of tortellini and the other fingering through a sheaf of papers. So absorbed was he in this information that he didn't notice his brother walking up to the table.

"You're still here?" Gian said with a bemused expression. "Is it another stargazing night?"

The dark-haired handler shook his head with a wistful expression. "Just getting a better look at this file. I'm surprised they assigned every _fratello_ in the Agency to a simple assassination."

"Ahh, that one. As I told our new guy this morning, it's a chance for him and his cyborg to get some field experience. What I didn't tell him is that our mark is a former Section 2 employee, and you won't find that in the file either."

Giuse looked up at him in shock. "Another one?"

"A man named Sergius, from the early days. He started hitting the bottle too hard and became unstable. Now he's threatening to expose everything and Lorenzo needs him dead, soon."

"I guess that's why he was so on edge when I met with him earlier."

Gian nodded wearily. "Don't go mentioning it to anyone else. Staff morale is already down because of Angelica. We tried to convince Marco to stay and train up another girl, but he wouldn't hear of it, so we had to bring in someone else."

Giuse closed the file with a grimace and turned back to his meal. "I've only met this Beto Silvano briefly, on my way to breakfast. What do you make of him?"

"Former military, though I'm sure you could tell that. Already hates my guts. Very serious and keeps to himself. I'm surprised Giorgio recommended him. Apparently he's doing this for a job referral like Claudio. I hear he's also in it for revenge, not that I can blame him for that. But he's too self-righteous for this sort of work. I'm not sure he'll last."

"Then let's make sure he does. The last thing we need is another failed handler and another cyborg wandering the facility with nothing to do. If a rogue staffer doesn't do us in, that just might finish the job."

Gian frowned and sat down. It wasn't like Giuse to be so concerned about business. Usually all he talked about was Henrietta, if he said anything. He was not only Gian's younger brother but the Agency's as well; the innocent one, relatively speaking, whom everyone handled with kid gloves. Perhaps he identified in some way with Beto's moral hang-ups. Or maybe Section 2's vulnerability had become so obvious that not even he could ignore it.

"You may be right," Gian allowed. "The higher-ups are already putting pressure on us, and Section 1 isn't helping. We've got group training in two days, so do what you can to loosen him up starting tomorrow."

"Me?" Giuse said uncertainly.

"You're the 'nice' one, aren't you? Maybe you can get through to him. I know an excellent bar in Sorrento ... "

* * *

"Let me get this straight," Silvano muttered as he nursed his beer at the counter in _Piazza Andrea Veniero._ "In the past year alone, this agency has lost two cyborgs and _three_ supervisors? What the fuck are you people doing?"

Giuse shook his head slowly. Uncharacteristically he'd been in the mood for strong drink, and so was a good deal further along than his co-worker. "I wake up mornings and fall asleep nights looking for the answer, Beto. And it's not at the bottom of a glass, no matter how many times I check."

Silvano's eyes crinkled, and he let out a staccato laugh that sounded like a bark. Giuse looked surprised, and in fact Silvano was too. He'd never so much as smiled at anyone in Section 2, but this Giuse person wasn't so bad even if he was Gian's brother.

"I know where you're coming from," he said, gesturing to his own glass. "The answers to life's questions, friends we've lost ... I know none of 'em are down there. But it doesn't hurt to make sure."

"One of the cyborgs was Angelica; you already know about her. Her handler Marco retired from the Agency after she ... broke down. The other was Elsa, who was killed in a terrorist attack along with her handler Lauro. At least that's the official story, which is all I can give you right now. Some of their intact parts were used to make Kess. Our funding might dry up at any point so Bianchi has to be resourceful."

Silvano counted on his fingers. "So that's, uh ... two cyborgs and two agents. What happened to the third guy?"

"Claudio Raballo? He's another long story."

The veteran turned to him sharply. The smile was gone, and now his voice sounded more like a growl. "The Raballo from the _Carabinieri?"_

Giuse hesitated. "I think so. Did you, uh ... know him?"

"The one who had to retire when a gun discharged into his leg and died less than a year later? _That_ Claudio Raballo? We only spoke once or twice, but I knew him by reputation. He was a good cop." Silvano leaned towards him, his voice rising slightly. "We always thought it was kinda strange, the way he got killed in a hit-and-run."

"Um ... "

"In broad daylight. With no witnesses. After taking a new job he wouldn't tell anyone about. That was strange too."

Giuse's shoulders sagged. "Beto, if we had anything to do with it, they never told me. That's the truth. But I do know we're in a dirty business. Even our most loyal people understand that. We're state-sponsored criminals using brainwashed children to do the government's dirty work. Half the people we report to want us shut down. Even Section 1 hates us, and they're _part_ of us. This program can't survive security leaks of any kind. If we're exposed the higher-ups will deny any knowledge of us and hang us out to dry, maybe even kill us themselves. Gian and the others don't talk about such things when I'm around, but ... it's easy enough to figure out."

"Then why are you still _there,_ man?" Silvano hissed. "If you know this whole thing is screwed up and doomed to fail, why are you sticking around?"

Giuse finished his drink and closed his eyes. He looked very tired all of a sudden, staring through half-lidded eyes at the paper lanterns that hung above the bar.

"My brother and I have our reasons. Besides, have you ever seen the night sky from the Agency's rooftop?" he said with a weak smile. "It's one of the best stargazing spots around."

Silvano's derisive snort made it clear what he thought of that answer. This man was not quite right, he decided; different from Gian but with a similar feeling of wrongness, like there was something lodged inside of him he couldn't quite swallow or absorb. He knew that feeling too well. Perhaps, in that, they were not so different.

They sat for a long moment in silence.

"I bring them out there," Giuse whispered finally. "To show them the constellations. All the girls, but especially Henrietta. By sharing that with her, being people they all can look up to, introducing them to art and beauty and the wonders around us ... we tell ourselves we're giving them a real life. Making this all okay somehow. Even if it's a lie, it's the best we can do."

Silvano tightened his fingers around his glass. An unwelcome thought entered his mind, an image of himself doing something like that with Kess—perhaps introducing her to music or teaching her woodcarving as his father did him—and he took another drink to chase it off. Better not to fall into that trap. Better to keep her at arm's length and do his job. The kindest lie you could tell was still a lie.

* * *

A slight hangover wasn't the only headache Silvano had to endure the next morning. Kess' first group training session started bright and early, and it was tough sledding so far. Oh, she followed orders well enough and took to her brand new sidearm right away—occasionally looking over her shoulder at him after a good shot, which drove him to distraction—but when it came to working in concert with with the other girls, her timing simply wasn't there yet. She lagged too far behind Triela during the breaking-and-entering exercise, then overcompensated with Henrietta so that the two of them nearly tripped over each other. There were audible chuckles from the staff (except for Giorgio) when the blonde misjudged her own inhuman speed and ran smack into a wall, which Silvano endured in livid silence while nearly biting through his cigarette.

Let them point and laugh and take their humanity for granted. None of them had endured what Kess did to be "hired" by the Agency, and if they were lucky they never would ... but he scowled and quickly derailed that train of thought. What Kess had endured as Nelleke no longer mattered. She was a resource now, he told himself, as much a tool of the trade as the gun she carried.

At least his fellow supervisors were more professional. Pale, impassive German agent Victor Hilshire looked on with a perpetually bored expression, perhaps daydreaming of Dresden; if so, he had earned the luxury. His cyborg Triela was certainly the most skilled and accomplished of the four active models. Giuse was too preoccupied with whispering instructions to Henrietta to really notice Kess' mistakes. No such luck with Gian, who periodically turned away and winced, as though wishing for more opaque sunglasses.

By the time that Perro woman ordered Kess to try an exercise with Rico, Silvano wasn't holding out much hope. But when they took up their sidearms and crept into the practice building in unison, something clicked. It wasn't seamless, but Kess anticipated Rico's timing, emulated her every move, and even adopted the same untroubled stare. Bullets punched unerringly through targets as they cleared the course with above average scores. The staff applauded, but it was Silvano Kess looked to. He acknowledged her with a stiff nod.

The one cyborg Kess could work with was under the tutelage of Silvano's least favorite supervisor. Wasn't that just his luck?

"Hey, I never told you this would be easy," Giorgio said under his breath.

* * *

 _I am called Kess. I am a cyborg designed by the Social Welfare Agency to serve and protect the government of Italy. Beto Silvano is my supervisor._

 _I do not understand the need to keep a diary, except that the others tell me I should. They say that if I operate for long enough, I will forget things. That I may suffer short-term memory loss, like Angelica. They speak of Angelica often even though she is gone._

 _I have little patience for writing and even less that I want to report in detail. My performance in group training was not acceptable. I embarrassed my supervisor until the final phase when I paired with Rico. I do not intend to perform so badly again._

 _All the others have offered help and advice except for Claes, who did not participate. She reads much and says little. I did not think she had accepted me as a member of the team until she gave me this diary._

 _Tomorrow I will join Rico, Triela, and Henrietta in the field to observe them assassinating a traitor. I look forward to it._


End file.
